[hackthemack]

My memory is a bit hazy, but I thought what you are describing is very common with people who flatline and come back? I have vague memories that a new anesthetic drug was developed and used on soldiers undergoing surgery in the Vietnam war, and there was something about it that caused the same kind of reaction in those who were put under. Again, my memory is very hazy on the subject. I should go do some research and update this comment (and I just might).

EDIT I did a little searching. I think it might have been an old report about Ketamine before it became more wide known. Apparently it was used during the Vietnam War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketamine#Near-death_experience

[pseudohadamard]

I prefer Mullah Nasruddin's experience, which was that death is perfectly OK unless you disturb the camels, at which point they beat you. https://ia800908.us.archive.org/28/items/idries-shah-the-exp...

[mrsvanwinkle]

Amazing recommendation! I was hooked by that most powerful New York Times Bestseller endorsement but in 1600s. "Many say: I wanted to learn, but only found madness. But those who seek wisdom will not find it elsewhere."

[_alternator_]

I was going to mention ketamine. Famous for this type of effect. I don't want to belittle the meaningful experience, but the mind is a really powerful organ and it's a safer bet to treat these experiences as arising from mind rather than beyond it. Shrug.

[kamaal]

>>it's a safer bet to treat these experiences as arising from mind rather than beyond it

Your brain has to be alive and exist normally for it to have these experiences. So its quite obvious, nothing is coming from outside of it.

I do feel like its some kind of brain rebooting itself or something like that.

Its sad babies can't tell us if they experience the same during childbirth, but I have a guess that they experience something similar as well.

Its just that the brain is starting up and checking if there is a OxDEADBEEF or a fresh boot. And giving you the primal, brain not initialising any other interface(like eyes, ears, limbs etc). You experience what life would be if only brain existed on its own without everything else apart from it.

[smokedetector1]

Safer why?

[_alternator_]

Lots to say there. The last few centuries have shown that many things which previously seemed inexplicable have been convincingly explained without resort to the supernatural. So a material basis of conscious experience seems a good bet.

Related, and hinted at by my original comment: the brain is capable of generating truly profound experiences. There is a tendency to ascribe them to something 'beyond ourselves' but again, advances in medicine and neuroscience have shown that these are explicable, subject to manipulation by chemical and electrical signals, which again suggests a material basis for conscious experience.

[smokedetector1]

It's true that many things have yielded to science. And yet, what we discuss (the "hard problem of consciousness") hasn't. In my opinion, the burden is on you to prove that progress in other questions implies inevitable progress on an unrelated question that hasn't budged at all.

I said this in my other comment but, when you say the brain generates truly profound experiences, you beg the question (in the philosophical sense of the phrase). It's all in the word "experience." For in order for an experience to happen, some entity has to be experiencing. For there to be an illusion, there has to be an entity being deceived. And then how do you explain that entity? It can't be illusory experiences all the way down..

Any honest person has to see the connection between experience and the material brain. But I don't think it's honest to say it's obvious that experience is entirely material. The connection is deeply mysterious and may never be understood. I personally would rather accept that than claim that I don't really exist just so that everything can be explained.

[_alternator_]

The evidence is abundant and continues to chip away at the "hard problem". For example, we can through anesthesia turn on and off conscious experience. Through various drugs we can manipulate the character of conscious awareness, inducing ecstasy, visions, abiding serenity, terror, pain, grief... all states that were previously described as ineffable.

To say we haven't made progress on understanding consciousness is to move the post; we continue narrowing the 'hard problem' and eventually it seems like there will be nothing left other than a misunderstanding, something like the resolution of Xeno's paradox.

[smokedetector1]

I don't mean to be insulting but, you don't seem to understand what the hard problem is. It is not "is the brain intimately linked with conscious experience?" I would agree we've made progress on that question. It is the harder question of "why is there conscious experience at all? Why does it feel the way it does?" I would argue no progress has been made on this whatsoever, and possibly can't be done.

You can try to claim that this question is meaningless, but that doesn't seem principled to me, not to mention that it completely ignores the fact that gestures broadly all this is happening.

[olalonde]

Jacob's Ladder is a great movie based on this theme.